UW20 Alumns Jennifer Nguyen, Matt Bevilacqua, and Alex Pazuchanics will present a panel entitled "Change and Motion: Place, Space, and Rhetoric in the Urban Space." Elizabeth Chacko, Associate Professor of Geography, will provide a faculty response. Discussion will follow the presentations.
When & Where
Friday, March 27
4:00 - 5:30 PM
Gelman Library 207
Change and Motion: Place, Space, and Rhetoric in the Urban Space
This panel explores the interactions between location and culture. Drawing from examples in New York, Washington, and Pittsburgh, the panel hopes to expose the discourse that develops around the urban experience in America.
Speakers will focus on the way in which their personal experiences and academic research in the metropolis contribute to an understanding of leisure, movement, and hegemonic identity. Pulling from discourses of geography, political theory, critical race theory, and the study of class, the panelists will engage the issues of homelessness, income inequality, and uneven geographic development.
"Beggars Can't Be Choosers: The Discursive Creation of Habituated Homelessness in Washington D.C."
Jennifer Nguyen examines the phenomenon of habituated homelessness in Washington D.C and argues that this apathetic behavior towards the homeless is deeply rooted to both cultural and class struggle. She argues that this generally dismissive view of homelessness is critically linked to our view of national identity and the moral statutes that accompany such a national identity. To assume any definition of "American morality" as it is often used in political discourse, as well as everyday rhetoric, is to assume both cultural homogeneity and hegemony.
Ms Nguyen critically examines the disparity between the stereotypical heroic image of the "American Moral Duty" and the behavior towards homelessness in our nation's capital. Moreover, the speaker posits that homelessness is an issue that is often ignored or left unaccounted for because the stigmatized associations of homelessness do not fit into the generally accepted homogenized view of the American dream. The homeless are essentially ex iled from this idealized imagery and thus are not included cultural identity. In the same way that America exercises political hegemony towards other regimes it feels are inferior, the homeless suffer a cultural hegemony that perpetuates their struggle to find themselves at home in their own country
"Omnibus No More: Deconstructing the Culture of Mass Transit"
Alex Pazuchanics analyzes the major trends that affect urban mass transportation systems, with a particular focus on transit systems in Washington DC and Pittsburgh. Using the works of several cultural theorists and radical geographers, he makes connections between who people are, where they live, and how they move. The paper examines structural and socioeconomic issues that face American transit systems. It details and critiques the two-tiered system that develops between buses and light rail. It details the institutional and social factors that contribute to the culture of automobility. The presentation closes with making the case for transportation studies as an interdisciplinary study of American culture. This work draws from discourses of race, poverty, class, and location to paint a picture of the way that transit systems work, and are perceived by both their riders and their non-riders.
"Renewal in Coney Island: What it Means for a Class of People Often Forgotten"
As of last month, Astroland, one of the two popular theme parks that compromise the commercial amusement portion of Coney Island, permanently shut its doors after more than forty-five years of operation. Its closing marks the latest development in a campaign to renew the area, undertaken by a powerful real estate development company with considerable support from the local city government. Matt Bevilacqua examines the history of Coney Island with regards to its cultural image as a social space of leisure reserved for the working class, and how the existence and availability of such an "urban populist" entertainment space can provide identity for a people often forsaken in a city's development plans. The paper also analyzes the history of gentrification as it occurred in Times Square and Las Vegas , the former of which held a similar image of working class identity prior to its renewal, and the latter or which has been invoked by the company in question as influence in its plans for the future of Coney Island. Examining the gentrification of these two neighborhoods exposes what is in store for Coney Island should it undergo renewal. It is ultimately concluded that, if the current plans for Coney's renewal come to fruition, then the neighborhood will lose its longstanding image as a space for the working class, and will instead adopt one of a luxury resort for members of the upper classes. This will generate more profits for the company and city hall, but leaves legions of blue collar New Yorkers at a loss, for without a substantial social space of entertainment, there is no space in which to find an adequate identity.
The Student Lecture Series is an ongoing public event sponsored by the Student Lecture Series Editorial Collective and the Capstone Committee of the University Writing Program. The Student Lecture Series features the research-based writing of UW20 students. The series features students who are identified by their professors as doing original, compelling writing and research. For current UWP students and the GW community, the lecture series is an opportunity to experience writing as a public event and writers as public intellectuals. Each student lecture includes a faculty respondent who has expertise or interest in the fields that the paper addresses who provides a 10 minute response that highlights the contributions of the paper. Conversation with the audience follows the presentation.
The Student Lecture Series is open to all members of the UW20 community and beyond, especially current faculty, students, and librarians. A special thanks to Cathy Eisenhower and Dolsy Smith for securing a room in the library for this presentation. And, a special thanks to the members of the Editorial Collective of the SLS for providing review and feedback for all paper submissions.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Student Lecture Series Event: Change and Motion: Place, Space & Rhetoric in the Urban Space
Friday, March 13, 2009
How to Get Started on Research as an Emergent Researcher
Most high schools and many college writing courses teach "Research" as a set of skills to be mastered, which can be applied to any "research problem." In the First Year Writing Program, we believe that research is a methodical, but organic and essentially thought-driven process. Simply put "research" are the situational but rigorous strategies that intellectuals use to observe the world (be it in the form of text, human behavior, social structures, or natural phenomenon) and to develop defensible and productive knowledge-claims about it. The faculty believe that first-year students are not only ready to conduct real research on authentic problems, we believe that their findings, analyses, and interpretations are worth reading. The toughest problem for emergent researchers working to develop methodical but organic strategies for observing the world in particular research situations is knowing how to manage multiple new concepts, processes, and techniques at the same time as they are becoming experts in the subject and field of their project.
In this post, Professors Phyllis Ryder & Eric Drown, and librarians Dolsy Smith & Deborah Gaspar offer advice on how to get started on research as an emergent researcher. Please, whether you're an emergent or experienced researcher, leave a comment or question derived from your own research experiences.
According to Prof. Drown, "emergent researchers have to embrace a substantive mind shift as they make the move from doing research assignments to rehearse research skills to conducting authentic research on open questions of active interest. In a 'research skills' approach, students are taught to answer questions definitively by seeking, evaluating, and presenting information. The work of the researcher is to collate, judge, and perhaps to recommend. In contrast, researchers working on authentic research problems have to construct objects of study, figure out the appropriate and meaningful questions to ask, locate scholarly communities of interest, determine or invent supple and reliable methods of observation and analysis, and test their knowledge-claims for accuracy, sufficiency, and productivity in particular discourse communities. In this model, the researcher observes, explores, creates, interprets, forges connections, persuades, serves and participates in communities of interest."
This all sounds very complicated, but librarian Dolsy Smith's"very unlibrarian-like" approach to his research-work captures the spirit of an organically developing matrix of essentially curiosity-driven tasks that makes up a useful research process:
"Research never really begins (just as it never really ends). You 'start' your research by sorting through what you already know or think or wonder about a subject, from the assumptions and impressions you bring to it, from whatever in your experience has drawn you to this subject in the first place. But this is hardly a limitation. In fact, if you neglect this part of the process, you'll have a hard time identifying your own stake in the subject matter, by which I mean that once you start juggling what others have already said about it, you won't know what you yourself have to say.
I start my research in a very exploratory mood: I spend a lot of time poking around, indulging in free association, following various angles and leads, looking for the hook that will catch my interest. Often I hop from footnote to footnote until I hit on a text that allows me to think about the subject from an unexpected perspective or with a vocabulary that I'm not used to. This kind of text need not relate directly to the subject I'm researching; indeed, it can work better if it doesn't. That's because the point of research and argument is to introduce fresh points of view on [even] familiar subjects, and the most important arguments are those that draw connections between things that no one had considered relevant to each other before. "Relevance" is not given; for any particular subject, there is not a finite set of relevant sources waiting to be discovered. The task of the researcher is to construct the relevance of what she finds. Something I read makes me think of something else--I test out a connection--if it doesn't click, I have to be prepared to go back and look (and think) again. But the key components of research are reading and writing and thinking."
Follow Mr. Smith's advice and you'll end up developing the "sense of interest in and curiosity towards your subject" that librarian Deborah Gaspar says is a key trait of successful researchers. According to Ms Gaspar, you can create that sense of curiosity by using research skills that you already have. In early stages of the project, she advises, researchers should "do a kind of mental inventory--ask yourself what you already know about your subject. Make a list of words and look for links between different ideas. This will set you up to think about what you want to know or are curious about a subject. There's nothing wrong with Googling your topic to help you in this idea-generating phase. Just use the results list (and search suggestions) to see how the search and summary algorithms connect words, ideas, examples, events, and people to one another and to see what your brain-based algorithms (intuition, insight) make of the material you've fished up."
Prof. Ryder's suggestions aim at helping emerging researchers understand what they're looking for and how to work with what they find. She says:
"Don't research just to find 'fact'; research to find arguments. While you might find some 'facts' useful for setting up the background of your essay, the real heart of your work will be to figure out the many ways people argue about the issue. It's rare to find two people who define the problem exactly the same way; fewer still define it the same way and recommend similar courses of action. More likely, you'll find that people disagree about what's going on, about whether what's going on is productive or harmful, about whether a solution fits the problem and so on. Look for the arguments and figure out how you can group them. Who is talking to whom about what part of the problem? Which part of this discussion will be most useful for you?
As you find some articles that really seem to speak to the question you've found, pause to read them. Write a "coming to terms" (a la Joe Harris in Rewriting) identifying the overall purpose of the piece, how it develops, and what its uses and limits are. This kind of close reading and writing as you go will help you keep track of the conversation you're following. You can start seeing patterns; you'll start noticing when a lot of people agree on the same point and when there is disagreement.
On a real practical level: Sign up for a session on how to use Refworks (the free citation manager GW libraries make available) and then use it to capture all the articles and books you think you might use. keeps track of what you found and where you found it, and will later format your bibliography for you. Using it from the start will save you time down the road."
Whether your research is in the humanities, social sciences, or sciences; whether you're seeking narrow answers to specific questions, opening broad new lines of inquiry, looking at familiar things in a new way, or clearing away previous wrong answers, research is a creative act of knowledge-making situated in the needs, habits, and interests of communities of interest. Just as what counts as "good writing" varies in different disciplinary, professional, cultural, or civic settings, so too does what counts as "good research." As you get more familiar with the research practices of the communities of interest you seek to join, you'll feel more comfortable with the ways members of those communities construct their objects of study, organize matrices of data, create frameworks of meaning, and make knowledge-claims. But, as Ms Gaspar advises, "if you think of yourselves as engaged in a conversation with other writers interested in similar concerns, and observe the ways they do things, you'll quickly learn how to contribute to, extend, and even change the scholarly conversation."
Please, whether you're an emergent or experienced researcher, leave a comment or question derived from your own research experiences!
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